Weiner faces growing calls to quit mayor's race

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New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner speaks during a news conference alongside his wife Huma Abedin at the Gay Men's Health Crisis headquarters, Tuesday, July 23, 2013, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

NEW YORK (AP) - Anthony Weiner pressed ahead with his bid for mayor Wednesday despite a growing number of calls for him to drop out over a new sexting scandal, saying the campaign is too important to abandon over "embarrassing personal things" becoming public.

Rivals, newspaper editorial pages and at least one former New York congressional colleague urged the Democrat to quit the race a day after he acknowledged exchanging raunchy messages and photos online even after the same sort of behavior destroyed his congressional career two years ago.

But Weiner brushed off such demands as he prepared to testify at a public housing hearing and participate in a candidate forum in the evening.

"I have posited this whole campaign on a bet, and that is that, at the end of the day, citizens are more interested in the challenge they face in their lives than in anything that I have done, embarrassing, in my past," he told an encampment of reporters as he left his Manhattan home in the morning.

"This is not about me" but about voters, he said, and headed for his campaign office.

The latest scandal erupted Tuesday after the gossip website The Dirty posted X-rated messages and a crotch shot it said he exchanged with a woman last year while using the online alias "Carlos Danger."

At a news conference Tuesday evening, Weiner, who has been a favorite in polls since he launched his political comeback attempt in late May, stood side-by-side with his clearly uncomfortable wife, Huma Abedin, and said he hoped the voters would give him another chance.

Abedin, a longtime adviser to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, reaffirmed her love and support for her husband and said the matter was "between us."

On Wednesday, one of his former congressional colleagues, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said: "I think he should pull out of the race. I think he needs serious psychiatric help."

Two of the city's major newspapers, The New York Times and the Daily News, said the 48-year-old Democrat had exhausted his opportunities for forgiveness with his latest indiscretions.

"The serially evasive Mr. Weiner should take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye" and the mayoral race, the Times wrote.

The Daily News declared Weiner to be "lacking the dignity and discipline that New York deserves in a mayor," and said "his demons have no place in City Hall."

At least three of his mayoral opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and former City Councilman Sal Albanese, both Democrats, and billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis, a Republican, said he should drop out.

"Anthony's presence in this race has become a never-ending sideshow that is distracting us from the debate of the serious issues of this election," de Blasio said.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, Weiner's strongest rivals in the polls, criticized him but didn't directly call on him to quit.

Thompson said on WNYC-AM that Weiner should "think about the people of this city and make the right decision," while Quinn said at a news conference that it is up to Weiner and his family to decide whether he should end his run, but New Yorkers "need a mayor whose is sole focus isn't self-aggrandizement."

Weiner has emphasized that he said when launching his campaign that more messages might emerge. But until Tuesday, he never said directly that some were sent as recently as last year.

"I regret not saying explicitly when these exchanges happened," he told supporters in an email Wednesday.

But Weiner dismissed the calls for him to drop out, saying that the campaign was "too important to give up because I've had embarrassing personal things become public" and that he wasn't surprised his opponents wanted him out.

Democratic strategists based in New York and Washington, where Weiner served seven terms in Congress before resigning in 2011, said there are few external means of pressuring Weiner to drop out.

Weiner has nearly $5 million to spend on the campaign, allowing him to mount a vigorous defense in televised advertising. Also, he was not particularly close to his colleagues in the congressional delegation, the strategists said, so he might be unmoved if they urged him to exit the race.

As for what the voters think, "I don't think it's a good sign" that Weiner's misbehavior continued even after his resignation, said Andrew Taub, 22, who works in the venture capital field.

"But I do believe for some people looking for a sign, for something to bolster his campaign," the fact that Abedin is staying with him "says a lot."

The unidentified woman involved in the newly disclosed messages told The Dirty that she was 22 when she began chatting with Weiner on a social networking site in July 2012, and that their exchanges lasted six months.

The Dirty posted explicit conversations of two people fantasizing about various sex acts, and ran a pixelated photo of what it said were Weiner's genitals.

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